Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Friday October 27, 2000
Mike Cohen, Associated Press Writer
The move by the Democratic Alliance runs counter to national government policy, which claims the drugs are dangerous and unaffordable.
An estimated 10 percent of South Africa's 42 million people are HIV positive, and the issue of how they are treated by the public health system has become increasingly politicized as Dec. 5 local government elections approach.
The Democratic Alliance controls one of South Africa's nine provinces. The country's health budget is allocated at the provincial level.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said the government had ignored an offer by five large pharmaceutical companies in May to dramatically lower the prices of anti-retrovirals. Thirteen other African countries have accepted the offer.
During meetings with officials from the World Health Organization , UNAIDS and several drug companies, Leon said he was told price reductions could be made available to provincial and local governments.
"We will therefore be able to take action on our own behalf to make lifesaving drugs available to all South Africans," he said.
Leon conceded it would be unaffordable to make anti-retrovirals universally available through the public health system, but claimed it would cost less than 1 percent of the health budget to supply them to HIV-positive pregnant women - to prevent transmission of the disease during childbirth - and to rape victims nationally.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has accused the drug companies of not presenting any substantive offer "except to make public statements which create the impression that governments of developing countries are not committed to providing anti-retroviral drugs".
Government guidelines aimed at stemming the spread of HIV and AIDS released Tuesday recommend giving HIV-positive pregnant women vitamin supplements, treating their sexually transmitted diseases and performing vaginal cleansing during childbirth to help prevent HIV transmission. But they made no mention of anti-retroviral medications, which health experts consider the most effective way to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
Tshabalala-Msimang condemned the "narrow view" that those drugs were the only way to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
She said the government would not offer the anti-retroviral drug AZT because it was too expensive but said the government was still carrying out tests on the drug Nevirapine, which has been offered free.
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